Hi there,
When an event is built and goes live the webpage lives forever and the problem is a lot of potential patrons Google a performance/artist, etc. and find links that go to a past event on our website. After 8 years, 200 events per year, Google has spidered a lot of events, a lot we are bringing back. We then get contacted that they can't buy tickets. (They are not seeing the past date on the webpage) In a perfect world, past events should fall off Tess automatically and redirect to our homepage, but I realize that isn't part of the application, so, I was just wondering if anyone else is having this issue and any steps you did to approach it? Thanks in advance.
Have you tried setting the Web Publish Dates for the performances in question? You can do that quickly in Season Maintenance. I know it takes them off the calendar, but I assumed it would also prevent the event pages from rendering?
My other thought would be to make a point of including Web Content for past shows that calls out the fact that the page is historical, and gives a link to either the calendar or even a current event listing for the artist. Alternatively, the web content could be encoded to automatically redirect to those pages.
I have my web publish end date at midnight on the night of the event so each day we have a fresh listing of what is still coming up. I just tested some google searches on a past film event we had and nothing came up so I think that seems to work.
Thanks for your replies. Unfortunately, the web pub & MOS dates do not affect the external web direct links to the event pages online visibility, so search engine caching, old email blasts, artist and Facebook website links, and even those pesky ticket broker web pages can potentially directly link to a past event.
Have you had any updates on this issue? We are in the same boat with a few of our Annual events. Google keeps the old shows at the top of their search results because it's showing as successful in their algorithm. A compounding issue is that some of our rental clients are going out on their own to 'locate' their show links instead of using the ones we've given them, and they also don't notice the old show dates. So then it's actively being published as well!
Our ideas revolve around stripping the TNEW images and content down on the expired events, and adding some generic "You seem to have found a dead link." language with links to our Home Page or the currently selling event for this year.
We had the same issue earlier this year, and I opened a TASK ticket. They told me that indeed this is an issue we'd have to address with Google directly.Sydney, your idea is exactly what they suggested as well - adding some content using HTML, such as a link or a button to lead the patrons to current event listings.
I still add ":::THIS IS A PAST EVENT. PLEASE CHECK EVENT DATE:::" to the event details/seasons pages content for past events, if someone does a Google search or clicks an old link somewhere at least they know it's past.